Critics of Enlightenment Rationalism
Edited by Kenneth McIntyre and Gene Callahan
Released by Palgrave Macmillan in 2020, Critics of Enlightenment Rationalism is an overview of some of the most important critics of “Enlightenment rationalism.” JMC fellow Kenneth McIntyre served as co-editor on the project:
This book provides an overview of some of the most important critics of “Enlightenment rationalism.” The subjects of the volume―including, among others, Burke, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, T.S. Eliot, Wittgenstein, Heidegger, C.S. Lewis, Gabriel Marcel, Russell Kirk, and Jane Jacobs―do not share a philosophical tradition as much as a skeptical disposition toward the notion, common among modern thinkers, that there is only one standard of rationality or reasonableness, and that that one standard is or ought to be taken from the presuppositions, methods, and logic of the natural sciences.
The essays on each thinker are intended not merely to offer a commentary on that thinker, but also to place that thinker in the context of this larger stream of anti-rationalist thought. Thus, while this volume is not a history of anti-rationalist thought, it may contain the intimations of such a history.
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Kenneth McIntyre is a Professor of Political Science at Sam Houston State University. His research interests include the philosophy of history and social science, the philosophy of law, American political thought, ordinary language philosophy, and the political philosophy of the British idealists (especially Oakeshott and Collingwood). He has written two books, The Limits of Political Theory: Oakeshott’s Philosophy of Civil Association and Herbert Butterfield: History, Providence, and Skeptical Politics, and has published articles on social contract theory, the philosophy of history, the concept of ideology, and ordinary language philosophy and political theory (among other subjects).
Professor McIntyre is a JMC fellow.
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